4.14.2009

Meeting Basic Needs - Patience Family Market!

I was so happy to be able to meet with Patience again after last seeing her in November. For those of you who are new to this blog, you can look back at some older posts if you would like to learn the history we have with Patience and her twins. My joy in being able to see her quickly turned to frustration and sadness. The living conditions are deplorable and the situation with her family is not good. They live in a community called Rock Spring Valley, which is in Monrovia, way back from the road, down a hill and through long alleys. It's basically a sewer where people have built various shacks.This is Me with Pastor Richards holding one of the babies, at our first meeting in March.

This is Patience with some of the kids in the room where they live.

These are the twins.

This is the dad.

This is the sewer that runs in front of the structure where they live.

This is a portion of the walk out of Rock Spring Valley back up to street level, which is Capital Bypass.

A few happy moments talking. I was able to bring some toys and clothes for the babies as well as the regular formula we have been providing.

We decided that we needed to help find a long term solution to helping Patience take care of the kids, and were hopeful we could see this family restored. The dad is living in the interior trying to earn a living through making coal. We were able to meet together with them and found that the situation does not have an easy fix. They need God. We were able to spend some time giving some biblical counseling to them as a couple. The place where Patience lives full time with the 7 kids was so hot and smelly and filled with flies that I had to excuse myself before the counseling was finished. Pastor Richards and Shad spent a good length of time talking and working with them to help them understand God's way for marriage and family. We determined that we would be able to help Patience set up a market for herself to sell goods there in front of the house and also take care of her children. Please keep this family in your prayers. We want to keep their personal details private. They just need prayer that God would do a mighty work in their lives, that they would repent and see reconciliation with God and in their marriage. We will be regularly checking up to see how she is doing.

Here is her beautiful market! The table was made special for her, and the goods are a variety of basic needs people in the community will be able to purchase.Patience in front of her market table with the babies. She, like many Liberians, does not like to smile for pictures! We have a few pictures of her smiling, but they are hard to get :-)